In a few places you compare, from a person’s perspective, the “fortune” of that person (or what “seems positive for” them), to their fortune if they never existed. How can this mean anything? I don’t think that someone/something that (hypothetically) doesn’t exist can have a (hypothetical) perspective. (And if they can’t even have a perspective, it probably doesn’t need to be said that neither can they have a fortune to compare to a fortune arising from a perspective on a (real or hypothetical) existence.
Seems more sensible (and might possibly make a practical difference) to, instead, judge from the perspective of those affected by the person in question. For example, instead of saying “Fortunately for my friend, the priest said yes”, saying “Fortunately for me, the priest said yes.”
That is a classic question of population ethics (LW). The author is writing from a totalist perspective (which I think is by far the most common view on LW) while you seem to find a person-affecting perspective clearly correct.
In a few places you compare, from a person’s perspective, the “fortune” of that person (or what “seems positive for” them), to their fortune if they never existed. How can this mean anything? I don’t think that someone/something that (hypothetically) doesn’t exist can have a (hypothetical) perspective. (And if they can’t even have a perspective, it probably doesn’t need to be said that neither can they have a fortune to compare to a fortune arising from a perspective on a (real or hypothetical) existence.
Seems more sensible (and might possibly make a practical difference) to, instead, judge from the perspective of those affected by the person in question. For example, instead of saying “Fortunately for my friend, the priest said yes”, saying “Fortunately for me, the priest said yes.”
That is a classic question of population ethics (LW). The author is writing from a totalist perspective (which I think is by far the most common view on LW) while you seem to find a person-affecting perspective clearly correct.